And continuing in the spirit of the season -- Frozen! Which I actually saw a couple weekends back, but forgot to post about. Anyway.

I should hate Frozen. I really should. It's a blatantly commercialized Disney film with several elements carefully designed to sell toys (hi, cute trolls that otherwise have no role in the plot, hi cute snowman who was less annoying than the trailers suggested) and several other elements clearly designed to make the obviously forthcoming Broadway adaptation much easier. It features princesses, two of them, that can easily be added to the incredibly popular Disney Princess lineup. (I swear, I run into little Disney princesses at the grocery store these days, and I live around Disney employees, not Disney tourists.) It has two scenes that can be made into Disney rides.

Essentially, it is as if Disney employees sat down and said, ok, what do we need to make money and make as many cross promotional products as possible and how much of this can be thrown into the movie? Got it? Great.

Primarily because of a seriously awesome scene where one of the princesses announces that she has just HAD IT with being good and SINGS AND SINGS AND SINGS and a GIANT ICE PALACE THRUSTS UP (don't think I didn't notice, Disney) as her Oh So Innocent Costume is transformed into a slinky number that seriously but seriously shows off her legs.

Last night we watched His Girl Friday, the classic film of fast banter and slimy journalism featuring Cary Grant speaking at high speed and Rosalind Russell, who really, but really knows how to wear hats. A few points that struck me while watching:

1. Everyone, but everyone, smokes like a chimney -- except for the murderer. And Ralph Bellamy, who loses the girl. Hero? Smokes. Journalists? Smoke. Evil politicians? Smoke. Cops? Smoke. Rosalind Russell? Is for all intents and purposes growing cigarettes out of her fingers.

We're so accustomed these days to the "only bad guys smoke" in films that even though I knew how the film ended I was half expecting Rosalind Russell to end up with the non-smoking murderer or Ralph Bellamy. How the hell did actors in the 1940s not all simultaneously come down with lung cancer?

2. All of the casual and not casual sexism: the reporter who is constantly looking up women's skirts and positions himself on staircases to do so; the way the journalists treat the murderer's sorta-girlfriend (she calls them on it, as does Rosalind Russell's character a few seconds later, and most of them look faintly ashamed and it ends their poker game); Walter insulting a random woman on the telephone (she hangs up on him); the way Ralph Bellamy's mother is casually picked up, tossed over a man's shoulder and carried out of the room (she's in her 60s.) Interestingly, this woman is the only woman who is actually manhandled -- and she's the only woman onscreen who doesn't have a job.

And yet, against this, the film also insists that the main character, Hildy, played by Rosalind Russell, doesn't really want a traditional marriage and children and to be taken care of and romance. Instead, the film says, what she really wants is a career. To the point where despite her protests, despite her valid irritation that her first honeymoon was interrupted by work, pretty much every character, including Ralph Bellamy who is offering the alternative, assumes that she will want to continue working. The film completely approves of Walter's various manipulations to get Rosalind back on the job and away from a traditional, normal role. The journalists are all betting that this will succeed -- and even has to succeed; they accept Hildy as a full time professional journalist and their equal, and immediately guess that she's hiding a major story from them (she is) and that she's capable of doing so (she is.) One of the journalist's gives Hildy's planned marriage about three to six months, noting that she can't be happy away from the job. As it turns out, he's dead on.

Which in turn is undercut by the film's gleeful insistence that Walter is absolutely within his rights to con and emotionally manipulate his ex-wife into doing something that she insists she doesn't want to do because, well, he knows what she really wants. As it turns out, he's right; she is mostly happy at the end of the film, if frustrated at getting cheated out of a honeymoon again, and the journalists are right too: Hildy is a great writer, and that's what she's meant to do.

3. Technically, this is a point that struck my brother, not me, but wow some voices are extremely distinctive: he recognized Ralph Bellamy as the same guy from Trading Places on voice alone. Granted Ralph Bellamy appeared in about a hundred movies, more or less, so generally speaking if you're trying to figure out if Bellamy was in anything prior to 1990 the answer is probably yes, but still.

Like its predecessor, Thor, Thor II: Into Your Wallet Again is a nice, fun, thoroughly cheesy popcorn flick that once again manages to criminally underuse both Anthony Hopkins and Idris Elba, though Hopkins at least seems to be thinking, eh, got my Oscars already, ha ha.

On a related note, to answer a couple of lingering questions from ICFA, Tor.com is probably the hands down worst way to contact me. I do have an account there and in theory you can send messages to it. In practice since the only people who were sending messages to that account were people desperate to sell me fake Prada bags or introduce me to new ways of finding porn, I stopped checking it, with the result that you could have a message there for three months before I noticed it.

As a recovering, or perhaps recovered, historian, I don't tend to watch that many documentaries. But recently two caught my attention for entirely different reasons, so I thought I'd blog a bit about both here. My comments got a bit long, so, cuts!

So it's the last day of the year, the traditional day for rounding up all of the good and bad things that happened in 2012. At the moment I'm not even feeling up to rounding up all of the good and bad things that happened over the holidays, so instead I'll just be trying to chat a bit about some of the movies my brother and I have been watching on the new TV.

For the most part, as a compromise, this has meant action films: Thor, Captain America: the First Avenger, Avengers, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, and the completely appalling The Expendables. All silly fun, except, to repeat, The Expendables.

(We also watched Tora! Tora! Tora! but although that has a lot of things blowing up that's not exactly in the same category as the rest of these films, so I won't discuss it much below.)

I had a mad, mad desire to see Clue back when it originally came out, back in the 1980s, a desire absolutely nobody around me shared, for about the same reasons. I wanted to see it because I'd heard that the ending was different at each and every movie theatre, and sometimes at each and every showing; everybody else wanted to skip it because they'd heard that the ending was different at each and every movie theatre, and thus thought, with some reason, that it didn't say much for the middle if viewers and the film could come up with three different endings – especially given that the movie was, in theory, a murder mystery, which by all the classic clichés of the genre should have one, and only one ending, unless on rare occasions you are Hercule Poirot and want to give one ending to the police and another ending to a nice cocktail party on a train. But I digress.

Also, perhaps partly thanks to the three separate ending, the initial reviews sucked.

Anyway, that all meant that I never got around to seeing this until last night, which also meant that I saw it the only way it's shown now – with all three endings. And I have to say, those three endings make it into a surprisingly fun and even good film.

Clue is based on the Parker Brothers board game, but despite this, manages to have a tiny bit of actual plot. It starts off rather slowly, as six guests arrive for a dinner party at a Mysterious Mansion at some Mysterious Time in the 1950s. (Cue dramatic lightning, which, obedient to the plot, goes off exactly when necessary.) It is of course Raining. And Cloudy. With Moody Music and TA DAS! The only thing missing: bats.

To somewhat preserve their anonymity, the guests are given pseudonyms from the board game – Mrs. Peacock, Miss Scarlet, Professor Plum, and so on. (Miss Peacock in her glasses and Miss Scarlet in whatever she's wearing make the costumes.) If this leads you to suspect a Gone With The Wind joke, give yourself a hug. They are greeted by a Butler and a Maid, and are served a rather uncomfortable dinner by the Cook, and meet Mr. Boddy, who may, or may not, be the person who has been blackmailing all of them for various reasons. As I said, it's all kinda slow until Mr. Boddy dies, and then it gears up into high farce, as eventually six (or seven) people end up dead, with six (or eight) potential murder suspects, and dealing with the bodies turns out to be decidedly tricky.

The characters all deeply suspect one another, in part because a) they all have excellent motives, b) they are all mostly strangers and thus have no reason to trust anyone, and c) the directors had rather obviously seen a number of Agatha Christie movies. Indeed, the final three endings are all a fairly classic send-up of the Hercule Poirot final explanation for the murder, done in rather more frenzied style by Tim Curry.

But despite the dead bodies, this film is not really about the murders at all. Indeed, as the film rather cheerfully explains at the end, we can easily think of at least three different ways the murders could have been committed. What makes this particularly awesome is that all three endings get at least one detail completely wrong, meaning that even the one that is supposedly "what really happened," even though that's probably the best and most satisfying ending, may not be not "what really happened."

Which makes this, as said, less about the murders, and more about questioning how much any of us can really know about what happened – and more about how storylines can be manipulated. Who did invite the guests? Who did provide the weapons? (We see them handed out in nice boxes, but we have no idea who put them in the boxes.) And, ok, yes, it was the iron pipe in the library, but who was wielding it?

In some ways, it is also one of the most blatantly sexist films I've seen in awhile – quite apart from the camera angles and deliberate shots focusing on the cleavage of Miss Scarlett and Yvette the Maid, the men – with the exception of Mr. Green, are almost constantly fondling or attempting to fondle Miss Scarlett and Yvette, and to a lesser extent the Cook (before she dies) and Mrs. White (who as a – let us be polite – widow of at least five husbands, is given more of a berth). No one tries to fondle Mrs. Peacock – presumably the glasses, which she seems to be wearing partly as a disguise, are too terrifying – but she, too, drops hints in her dialogue that her life has been deeply constrained by men. And yet all of this is, a, perfectly in character and believable for the 1950s (as compared, say, to X-Men: First Class, which was even more sexist, but in a way that failed to show the actual sexism of the 1960s. Yvette, Miss Scarlet, Mrs. White and the Cook have all, in their own ways, learned to deal with predators; Mrs. Peacock has decided to go along with the system.

And it's undercut by the decision of the film to make the two worst sexual harassers – Professor Plum and Colonel Mustard – the most incompetent characters of the film (with the possible exception of the poor singing telegram girl), no matter which ending of the film you believe.

For all of this, this is a murder mystery with multiple endings primarily cast with comedians (and one rock star). The cast is pretty much all hilarious; if some of the sexual innuendo gets a little much, and a couple of the are the groan out loud sort (Wadsworth: "But he was your second husband! Your first husband also disappeared!" Mrs. White: "Well, that was his job. He was an illusionist." Wadsworth: "But he never reappeared!" Mrs. White: "He wasn't a very good illusionist.") Glad I caught up with it.

Without trying to, I happened to watch this in a theatre one quarter filled with a generally appreciative and polite audience of employees of Universal Studios and excited Twilight fans whose in and post film comments perhaps colored my snark here. (Spoiler: the Twilight fans all felt, without exception, that Twilight is a much, much better movie, a verdict that I shall not comment on further.)

Anyway. This, as the Twilight fans agreed, is a Film With Problems. Not visual problems – it looks great throughout and I think I speak for everyone when I say that we were all just as glad not to have this in 3D. But script problems. Acting problems. (Particularly with Kristen Stewart, where the kindest word I can use is "miscast.") Turning Ray Winstone – yes, that Ray Winstone – into a dwarf problems. Unexpected Bambi and stealing from Japanese anime problems. Accent problems. Christianity problems. (Seriously, film. What?) Snow White not being particularly likeable problems. Me spending the film cheering on the Evil Queen problems.*

I'm alternatively compelled and repelled by the story of Bluebeard, that cheerful little tale about a serial killer, his young wife, and her completely useless freaking sister Anne. So when Catherine Breillat's Bluebeard film popped up on Amazon, I figured I'd give it a try.

And now I'm half regretting that decision.

Because the original tale is extremely short, Bluebeard the film tells and intertwines two stories: the fairy tale, set in some vague Renaissancy time period, and that of two 20th century sisters telling the tale. It is dull and disturbing and distracting all at once, but I was mostly enjoying it until the end.

Shorter version: The best Hulk film, like, ever. Hulk Smash! And I don't even like the Hulk.

Longer version: Things go boom! Tony Stark quips! Thor makes sure we can all see how well cut he is! The one woman on the team isn't given any superpowers, but makes up for it by actually doing kick ass stuff. The film otherwise massively flops the Bechtel test, although it does spend quality time staring at the butts of the three women characters with speaking lines. As films do. (Gwyneth Paltrow arrives briefly for the twin jobs of snarking and showing off her legs.) I would have been offended if we had not gotten some equal exploitive time with Thor and to a considerably lesser degree Captain America and Hawkeye. Frankly, I think the next Thor film should just cut to the chase and call itself, "Thor: The Abs. The Shoulder Muscles. The Butt." to, you know, save time. But I digress.

This is not, to put it mildly, a deep movie. It is, I grant you, a bit more thoughtful than last year's Thor, but that's not saying much. Sure, a couple of characters try to speak deeply about freedom and choices and trust and heroics and an old guy stands up to remind us that Fascism and Dictators are like, bad, yo, and Captain America isn't really sure that the current world is an awesome place, and some Wall Street offices suffer collateral damage, yay, and if you head out to the bathroom you might miss the conversation about Guilt. But whatever. It's not going for deep. It's going for fun.

And that it delivers, mostly thanks to Robert Downey, Jr. (Iron Man) who is like, wait, I get to make fun of my coworkers? More please! Tom Hiddleston (Loki), who apparently looked at the script, said, well, if I have to say this crap, I may as well say it with far too much conviction, and, the surprise, Mark Ruffalo as HULK SMASH. He's also pretty good as Bruce Banner, but, let's face it, HULK SMASH.

AND SMASH AND SMASH. It's the main reason to see the film.

Also, there is a blink and you will miss it Oz reference. Just saying.

Looking forward to seeing the half hour of deleted scenes on the DVD, which apparently include Captain America meeting up with his love interest from the previous film. Also not here: any scenes between Thor and Natalie Portman "I'm not an astrophysicist, I just play one with great abs," although the film does include two lines of dialogue to explain her absence, without using the phrase "Ms. Portman demanded way too much money for a cameo" which was impressive.

Full disclosure: it's been years since I saw the first Clash of the Titans film, which I don't recall enjoying that much, and I missed the remake entirely, so I came in with pretty much no knowledge of what had happened before. Which turned out not to mean much, but I anticipate. Second, I must admit to a slight bias when it comes to the classical gods, and by bias, I mean that Athena was, hands down, the most awesome of any of the Greek deities, bar none. She fights, she weaves, she turns people invisible, she inspires them to say the right things, she wears beautiful sandals on her beautiful feet which are apparently so awesome Homer can't stop talking about them, she's not in this movie, although she's listed in the credits.

I'm not sure that there'd be any point to reviewing this movie, since it's less a movie and more an exercise in nostalgia. I grew up with Grover and Kermit on Sesame Street, and then we moved to Italy and I had to lose the Muppets for awhile, and then we came back and the Muppets were on syndication in something even funnier that didn't attempt to teach me about numbers and letters and important life lessons, and a couple of them were throwing fish or blowing things up. I could approve of that.

So I'm the target audience, and with a few missteps here and there (I could have done without Fozzie's shoes, and the major life lesson imparted by this movie is that Chris Cooper should never, ever, ever, and I do mean never, ever, ever, ever ever, rap again; that sequence stunned our multiracial audience into stark horror), it worked for me. Oh, sure, the mania and zaniness has been toned down some, and although the guy during Kermit did a great job with Kermit's voice, Miss Piggy and Fozzie were recognizably....different. Not bad, just...different, and as someone who loved loved loved Grover I must say I wish Frank Oz could come out of retirement for the Muppets. Gonzo, though, is the same puppeteer/voice. All together now...Awwwwwwwwwwwww!

But these are quibbles. Overall, this is a movie with a heart, and a few explosions, and one of the hands down best Nirvana covers ever (I admit it took me a second to recognize the song, but once I did I was rolling.)

My initial reaction to this film, on Twitter, was that it was even worse than The Three Musketeers. After sleeping on this for a bit, I realized that I was wrong: The Three Musketeers is a much worse film on pretty much every level.

In Time is just more frustrating.

Largely because the concept is excellent, and here and there, the film allows us tiny glimpses of what it could have been, but wasn't. (Like, on a minor note, if the theme of your film is that everyone stops aging at 25, make sure that everyone looks 25, instead of, say, early to mid thirties, and cast actors who are actually in their mid twenties, instead of, say, early to mid thirties. Justin Timberlake is 30; Cillian Murphy 35, Vincent Kartheiser 32, Johnny Galecki 36, and so on. ) Unfortunately, aside from those tiny glimpses, the execution is mostly inept, and rather than an intriguing film about time, life, and class distinctions, we have a film about women wearing very uncomfortable clothing and some kinda inept chase scenes.

It's not the fault of the acting – even Justin Timberlake tries, and it's not his fault that his character's actions generally make little to no sense. Or the beautifully done, sometimes even intriguing camera work. No, this is the fault of just not thinking.

But before I get into the snark, first, a disclaimer: about midway through the movie, the theatre, for whatever reason, decided to turn on the heat, making me a bit dizzy and forcing me to pause and pull off my sweater, causing me to miss some of the Star Trek moments.

Second, three warnings: one, as reader thette has correctly noted, those of you with an interest in accuracy in your historical costuming should probably avoid this film, however spectacular the hats. Two, those of you with no interest in accuracy in your historical costuming may well find yourself distracted by the hats. And three, seeing this movie while accompanied by a chemist may well result in an upset or distracted chemist who will point out the various places where the film got the physics wrong. This includes some stuff with the hats.

Third, portions of this film were actually – hold your shock – almost ok, particularly the bits focusing on the Three Musketeers who are all fairly decent in their roles, although the actor playing D'Artagnan should never be allowed near a period piece or, for that matter, a camera again.

This is the movie that Russell Crowe reportedly walked out on, and honestly, after seeing it, who can blame him? I am imagining the meeting between the producers and script writers now:

Script writer 1: We've got a wildly expensive idea for a movie for you. It's set in Australia!

Producer 1: Ok, cue the budget for kangaroos. What's the story?

Script writer 2: A prim young British aristocrat arrives in Australia and realizes that to avenge her husband's murder, she has to take part in a cattle drive across the Badlands of Australia as the kangaroos look on HELPLESSLY in the background! Fortunately, a hot cattle drover is THERE to help her. We're calling him Drover for the laughs. (Really. Everyone calls him Drover. I was assuming for the laughs.) They can even kiss in the rain.

Producer 2: Hmm. Not sure that's enough story.

Script writer 1: Fortunately, the Japanese are invading!

Producer 1: During the cattle drive?

Script writer 2: No, after. Because, you know, bombing runs are tough on the cows, and we want to use Real Cows. For realism. To go along with the Fake Japanese Airplanes and British Warships we'll be using later.

Producer 2: I dunno. See, I don't think Australia, in World War II, had enough going on, what with Japanese bombings and so on. People need something big.

Script writer 1: Well, I suppose we could throw in a third plot, touchingly and respectfully showing the tragedy of the aboriginal Australian population and their forced cultural assimilation as the Japanese approach, complete with bar fights!

Producer 1: Sounds like a bit of a downer.

Script writer 2: What if, while all the evil characters are happily comparing the aboriginal Australians to children, we, you know, go deep and cast the main aboriginal Australian as a child? With a nice added primitive aboriginal Australian in the background chatting at the wind and lugging a spear around. We can even throw in a nice lesson about racism!

Producer 2: Which is?

Script writer 1: If white people mistreat aboriginal Australians, the aborigines will get shot by Japanese!

Producer 1: That's nice.

Script writer 2: Plus, this will give us the chance to have the adorable aboriginal kid stop a cattle stampede by wiggling his fingers.

Producer 2: I dunno. I'm just not feeling it yet. Got any villains?

Script writer 1: Apart from, you know, the Japanese invaders and the hellish, hellish Australian weather that we'll be depicting through careful CGI imagery?

Producer 1: Yeah. We just don't think that's enough.

Script writer 2: How about an over-the-top villain who for some reason wants to take on still more cattle on the eve of a freaking invasion AND is racist AND also fathered the cute little aboriginal kid?

Producer 1: Wait, so the aboriginal kid –

Script writer 1: Is actually half-caste, yes! Just ADDS TO THE DRAMA.

Producer 1: Or...not.

Script writer 2: We can have the villain twirl his moustache!

Producer 1: Or...not.

Script writer 1: Ok, we'll lose the moustache. But I guarantee you'll want it back later, when the villain gets ready to kill all of the cute little orphans that inexplicably survived the Japanese bombing attack.

Producer 2: But SOMEONE dies, right?

Script writer 2: A couple minor characters, sure. And to add more tension, we can even pretend to kill one of the leads off at one point, leading to a TOUCHING MOMENT against a SMOKE FILLED SCREEN.

Script writer 1: Plus, we've filled in any potential dull moments with Amusing Stock Characters, including the Well-Meaning Drunk Guy Who Gets Run Over By Cows; the Chinese Guy With Amusing Mispronunciations of Words; the Other Wise Black Guy; the Sassy Black Woman; the Black Woman Who Dies For a Poignant Moment; the Mean Bartender; and some Disapproving Stuck Up British Socialites In Australia For Unexplained Reasons.

Producer 1: Hmm. I'm just not sure -- cattle stampede, World War II, adorable children, drinking, vengeance for a husband's murder, a mysterious Australian bushman, various spear throwing and excessively fake looking bombing -– do you really think you'll be able to fill an entire move with just this?

Script writer 2: Well, we've thrown in Hugh Jackman's naked chest.

Producer 3: And Nicole Kidman?

Script writer 1: She's promised to look into the camera without blinking a lot.

Script writer 2: And everybody will sing from The Wizard of Oz. A lot.*

Producer 1: Well. I'm sold.

To be fair, when the film isn't focused on little CGI boats and planes, it looks magnificent. And the actors do what they can with the very limited script and dialogue (although you get the distinct impression that Jackman wanted huge changes to the script). Kidman and Jackman even manage chemistry together. The actor playing the aboriginal kid is cute and will hopefully manage to have a career beyond this. And I have to admit that I fell over laughing when the response to the Japanese bombing was to play "Somewhere – OVER THE RAINBOW!" On a little harmonica. It is a moment of utter if unintentional awesomeness.

And to be further fair, had the film focused on just one storyline – the cattle drive, World War II, or aboriginal assimilation, combining any of these with the epic romance, it might have worked. As it was –

Well. It had a cute kid playing "Over the Rainbow" on the harmonica as the Japanese were bombing everything. Great stuff. Plus, you know, Hugh Jackman's chest. There's something to be said for that.

*Er, not that they could. A tiny, tiny bit of research would have shown that The Wizard of Oz film had not, in fact, been shown in Australia by the events depicted in this movie. But as I've always tried to say, Oz is magical and even defies time and geography, so I'm willing to let this one go.

I had two main thoughts after watching Super-8: one, that this was so far the best movie of the summer (not that the competition has been stellar, I admit; the runner up is Thor, followed by X-Men), and two: Abrams. Cut down on the lens flares. Trust me, you do not want this to be your directorial signature.

Ok, first off: I never really read the Green Lantern comics. So I know pretty much zilch about the universe, the characters, and so on, except for the pretty cool rings and the lighting effects, and I have no opinion, and by no opinion, I mean, none, on which Green Lantern is "the best" – Alan Scott, Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, John Stewart or Kyle Raymer, names I just got from Wikipedia. (If they are wrong this is entirely Wikipedia's fault.) In fact I may be the only person here slightly more familiar with Alan Scott than the rest of the Green Lanterns, this because for years my only exposure to Green Lantern was in a compendium of the Great American Superheroes, focusing on works on the 1940s and Wonder Woman in all of her S&M glory. This was not the best of exposures to Green Lantern.

Second off, it might be best to not see this film with a scientist. Just saying.